A technician may be given a work order to fix a problem with respect to an asset in a facility. The technician may try to identify the location of the asset using an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system which may have information on the last known location of the asset. Alternatively, the technician may need to identify the physical location of an asset based on a campus map located at the campus, a printed map, or printed floor plans that will help the technician locate an asset within a large industrial complex, for example.
Once the technician locates the particular asset, the technician may scan a barcode or search for the asset within the ERP system. After the technician finishes working on the asset from a work order, the technician may move to a next work order line item. The technician may try and work assets that are known to be in the same general location. However, this may take some planning on the part of the technician. For example, the technician may print out a list of all the assets on work orders that the technician may work for the day, and then try and plot a course of work that would be efficient. This can prove to be time consuming and cumbersome, especially if assets are located on multiple floors or are spread out across a large campus.
Even once a route is planned, assets may have moved within a location or even to a different location nearby before the technician can work all of the assets. Technicians may spend a large part of their workday locating assets that may be very near to them, but which are not identified to be worked in a logical order.